Crow Translate

Crow Translate is a simple and lightweight translator programmed in C++ / Qt that allows to translate and speak text using Google, Yandex and Bing translate API. You may also be interested in my library QOnlineTranslator used in this project.

Content

Screenshots
Features
Default keyboard shortcuts
CLI commands
D-Bus API
Dependencies
Third-party
Installation
Building
Localization

Screenshots

Linux KDE

_{Screenshots: OS: Arch Linux | Desktop environment: Plasma | Theme: Breeze | Icons: Papirus | Wallpaper: Catalina}

Windows 10

_{Screenshots: OS: Windows 10 | Theme: default | Wallpaper: WallpapersCraft}

Features

Translate and speak text in any application that supports text selection
Support 117 different languages
Low memory consumption (~20MB)
Highly customizable shortcuts
Command-line interface with rich options
D-Bus API
Available for Linux and Windows

Default keyboard shortcuts

You can change them in the settings. Some key sequences may not be available due to OS limitations.

Wayland does not support global shortcuts registration, but you can use D-Bus to bind actions in the system settings. For desktop environments that support additional applications actions (KDE, for example) you will see them predefined in the system shortcut settings. You can also use them for X11 sessions, but you need to disable global shortcuts registration in the application settings to avoid conflicts.

Global

Key	Description
`Ctrl` + `Alt` + `E`	Translate selected text
`Ctrl` + `Alt` + `S`	Speak selected text
`Ctrl` + `Alt` + `F`	Speak translation of selected text
`Ctrl` + `Alt` + `G`	Stop speaking
`Ctrl` + `Alt` + `C`	Show main window

In main window

Key	Description
`Ctrl` + `Return`	Translate
`Ctrl` + `Q`	Close window
`Ctrl` + `S`	Speak source / pause text speaking
`Ctrl` + `Shift` + `S`	Speak translation / pause text speaking
`Ctrl` + `Shift` + `C`	Copy translation to clipboard

CLI commands

The program also has a console interface.

Usage: crow [options] text

Option	Description
`-h, --help`	Display help
`-v, --version`	Display version information
`-c, --codes`	Display language codes
`-a, --audio-only`	Print text only for speaking when using `--speak-translation` or `--speak-source`
`-s, --source <code>`	Specify the source language (by default, engine will try to determine the language on its own)
`-t, --translation <code>`	Specify the translation language(s), splitted by '+' (by default, the system language is used)
`-l, --locale <code>`	Specify the translator language (by default, the system language is used)
`-e, --engine <engine>`	Specify the translator engine ('google', 'yandex' or 'bing'), Google is used by default
`-p, --speak-translation`	Speak the translation
`-u, --speak-source`	Speak the source
`-f, --file`	Read source text from files. Arguments will be interpreted as file paths
`-i, --stdin`	Add stdin data to source text

Note: If you do not pass startup arguments to the program, the GUI starts.

D-Bus API

Currently available only for global shortcuts.

io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate
└── /io/crow_translate/CrowTranslate/MainWindow
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.copyTranslatedSelection()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.open()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.speakSelection()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.speakTranslatedSelection()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.stopSpeaking()
    ├── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.translateSelection()
    └── method void io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.quit()

For example, you can show main window using dbus-send:

dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate /io/crow_translate/CrowTranslate/MainWindow io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.open

Or via qdbus:

qdbus io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate /io/crow_translate/CrowTranslate/MainWindow io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate.MainWindow.open
# or shorter
qdbus io.crow_translate.CrowTranslate /io/crow_translate/CrowTranslate/MainWindow open

Dependencies

Arch Linux packages

Build: qt5-base qt5-multimedia qt5-x11extras qt5-tools

Run: qt5-base qt5-multimedia qt5-x11extras gst-plugins-good openssl

Debian packages

Build: qt5-default qt5-qmake libqt5x11extras5-dev qttools5-dev-tools qtmultimedia5-dev qtbase5-dev qtbase5-dev-tools

Run: gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3 qtgstreamer-plugins-qt5 gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-alsa gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio libqt5multimedia5-plugins

openSUSE packages

Build: gcc-c++ libqt5-linguist-devel libqt5-qtbase-devel libqt5-qtmultimedia-devel libqt5-qtx11extras-devel

Solus packages

Build: qt5-tools-devel qt5-multimedia-devel qt5-svg-devel qt5-x11extras-devel

Run: qt5-base qt5-x11extras qt5-multimedia libstdc++ libgcc glibc libx11

Third-party

Libraries

This project uses the following third-party libraries:

QOnlineTranslator - provides free usage of Google, Yandex and Bing translate API.
QGitTag - uses the GitHub API to provide information about releases.
QHotkey - provides global shortcuts for desktop platforms.
QTaskbarControl - allows to create a taskbar/launcher progress for all desktop platforms.
SingleApplication - prevents launch of multiple application instances.

Therefore, if you want to clone this project, you need to use the --recursive option:

git clone --recursive git@github.com:crow-translate/crow-translate.git

or you can initialize these modules later:

git clone git@github.com:crow-translate/crow-translate.git
git submodule init
git submodule update

Icons

Only Linux supports icon theming. Windows use Papirus icons.

FlagKit icons are used for flags.

Installation

Windows

📦 Releases page

📦 Scoop package

sudo scoop install crow-translate -g

Linux

Arch Linux, Manjaro, Chakra, etc

📦 Stable version in AUR

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/crow-translate.git
cd crow-translate
makepkg -si

📦 Git version in AUR

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/crow-translate-git.git
cd crow-translate-git
makepkg -si

Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc

📦 Releases page

Fedora

📦 Fedora Copr

sudo dnf copr enable faezebax/crow-translate
sudo dnf install crow-translate

CentOS, RHEL

📦 Fedora Copr

sudo yum copr enable faezebax/crow-translate
sudo yum install crow-translate

openSUSE Tumbleweed

📦 Tumbleweed repository

sudo zypper install crow-translate

openSUSE Leap

📦 Open Build Service

Solus

📦 Solus repository

sudo eopkg it crow-translate

Building

Automatic script

You can use the automatic script that builds Crow Translate and creates a package for your distribution:

cd dist/unix
./create-package.sh

Than you can install it as usual. The script will tell you where the package will be after the making. Currently, only Arch Linux, Debian and their derivatives are supported.

Manual building

You can build Crow Translate by using the following commands:

qmake # Or qmake-qt5 in some distributions
make
make clean

You will then get a binary named crow.

Build parameters

PORTABLE_MODE - Enable portable functionality. If you create file named settings.ini in the app folder and Crow will store the configuration in it. It also adds the “Portable Mode” option to the application settings, which does the same.

Build parameters are passed at the qmake stage: qmake "DEFINES += PORTABLE_MODE".

Localization

To help with localization you can use Transifex or translate files in data/translations with Qt Linguist directly. To add a new language, make a request on the Transifex page or copy data/translations/crow.ts to data/translations/crow_<ISO 639-1 language code>.ts, translate it and send a pull request.

wbs306/crow-translate